


At the Hospital

by applecameron



Category: Leverage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-12
Updated: 2011-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-15 14:49:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/161899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/applecameron/pseuds/applecameron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for The 12-Step Job, The Maltese Falcon Job.</p><p><i>Parker breaks into the hospital twice.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	At the Hospital

Parker breaks into the hospital twice.

The first time, she drifts in through the emergency room and then scrambles up into the ducts, pops out near Nate’s floor, lifts some janitorial supplies to infiltrate the room next to his with and then crawls across the ceiling panels into his room. Like stealing diamonds from the French National Bank. (That’s _super_ easy.)

Nate’s asleep when she lets herself down out of the ceiling. There’s a guard outside his door and his hand is tied down to a board with lots of tubes and things going in and out of his veins and stuck to his skin and whatever. The other hand is cuffed to the rail. There’s no tube in his mouth though, which is a little slack in an unfamiliar way. And that’s what tells her its not proper sleep, it’s unconsciousness. Plus, his hair is weird. Weirder. She’s seen him asleep. She’s seen everyone asleep. This isn’t it. She’s seen Nate knocked out, and his mouth was the same that time.

Satisfied with her deduction, she watches him be unconscious for a while. It’s been four days. To be unconscious for that long a time could be bad. Why didn’t he tell them he was sick? They would have carried him off to the copter and Eliot could have beat up even more people. A win for everybody: escape, beatings, and medical care. What was he thinking?

Nate’s face is almost like a stranger’s under her scrutiny. Slack. For a moment, she loses that it’s him at all, and sees just another Face instead.

It’s hard for her to tell what other people are thinking. The masks move and words come out and how else is she supposed to know, unless they tell with the words that come out? Except people don’t always say what they actually mean, which is unfair and annoying and the basis of an entire genre of comedy movies, apparently.

Nate and Hardison and Sophie and Eliot, and Tara some, but not entirely, aren’t just faces. Not to her. They’re _real_.

Only Nate’s not inside his body right now. He’s gone somewhere she doesn’t know how to follow. She picks up the clipboard from the foot of the bed and inspects paperwork for words she recognizes. Gunshot - okay, that’s one. Infection, that’s another. The way he was standing when he said good-bye, hand to his side while calling them _family_ , fills in the rest.

She wasn’t going to tell anyone about going to the hospital, but maybe now she will.

***

The second time, she uses a different route, for variety. Plus, elevator shafts are just fun.

Nate’s restless when she gets into the room with him, but Parker doesn’t know if that’s good or bad. She decides to assume that its good, because more awake is better than less awake. She takes quiet photos of all the papers she finds in the room, to add to Hardison’s data, then comes and stands by Nate’s shoulder. His face is flushed and the handcuff is replaced with a leather manacle. Are hospitals kinky? She ponders for a bit and concludes upon inspection of a red, handcuff-shaped welt on Nate’s wrist that the restlessness has been going on for a while and the manacle immobolizes his arm better. Quite a bit easier to get out of, though. She files that observation away for future use.

Nate’s starting to make some noise, not words, or maybe the word no, said really low. The restlessness turns into actual thrashing and she eyeballs the ceiling panels for a quick escape if he attracts the guard’s attention.

Having estimated the time she’d need and the equipment to jump from, she looks back at Nate.

Whose eyes are partly open. His breathing is off.

He speaks after a long minute of what, with Eliot, would be a staring contest. Nate, however, seems to be figuring out if she’s really there. Presumably deciding she is, he tells her, “I’m alive.”

And she gets it. Parker gets it. It’s too big to keep inside, understanding, so she says “Oh,” back to him. Oh. “You were going to die, to protect us? To finish the job?”

He looks so sad, tears sliding down the sides of his face. “I’m sorry. Parker, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to leave, but --”

“You wanted this?” Her nod encompasses, well, everything.

“It hurts --” His eyes shut.

“You were shot,” she reminds him helpfully.

There’s a move that would probably have been a handwave but it goes nowhere, thanks to manacles and tubes and so on. “Not just the shot.”

“Oh.” It’s the only word for the occasion. “You mean, emotionally.”

The hole in his heart, the one that he drank to fill, or ignore. The dadness of Nate that was taken from him.

And that’s when she gets it again, another “oh” marking the moment. He needs them. To need him. He needs someone to be for.

He can’t be, by himself. Any more than she knows how to be, with regular people.

She touches him, fingertip to his shoulder, so that he knows she’s saying something important. Waits until his eyes open again. “We need you. We need you because you make us family.”

And she disappears up into the ceiling, knowing that he’s crying in her wake, knowing that she's making a mess of things, lacking Sophie’s skill at divining what to say, but not knowing any other thing to try to make him stop.


End file.
